East Germans Ransack Secret Police Headquarters

EAST BERLIN — Thousands of angry East Germans on Monday stormed headquarters of the secret police, smashing windows, threatening staff, ransacking offices and hurling furniture out the windows.

The demonstrators, angry at government delays in disbanding the hated agency, ended their rampage after Prime Minister Hans Modrow and opposition leaders appealed for restraint.

Thousands of factory workers in East Berlin, Jena, Gera, Karl-Marx-Stadt and Zwickau also downed their tools in a warning strike aimed at pressuring the government to speed dismantling of the secret police.

The demonstration at police headquarters in East Berlin started peacefully with people chanting, ``Now the people are on the way.`` But as the crowd grew, the mood became more heated and demonstrators surged into the huge building. Smiling traffic police made no effort to intervene.

Baerbel Bratfish, 32, an artist who took part in the demonstration, said soldiers inside the building also waved and laughed as people poured past them. Some demonstrators brought bricks and mortar, intending to seal the offices, but left without doing so, she said.

One woman told a West Berlin radio station she had found pay slips showing some police officers had received salaries of $4,800 a month-several times the average East German wage.

The demonstrators at first ignored an appeal for calm from Baerbel Bohley, a leader of the New Forum opposition movement, and she left in tears. But later they heeded appeals by Modrow and others.

A television report Monday night said a citizens` committee and officers of the regular police sealed off the headquarters after the protest ended.

Modrow created a storm of protest last week when he sought to create a new internal security force to replace the secret police. He finally withdrew the plan.

In another development, Prosecutor General Hans-Juergen Joseph announced that former head of state Erich Honecker and his secret police chief, Erich Mielke, faced indictment on treason charges.

Honecker, 77, who ruled East Germany for 18 years until his ouster last Oct. 18, is in a hospital recovering from an operation to remove a malignant tumor from his kidney. Mielke, 82, has been under arrest since his removal in November.

In announcing the planned indictments at a round-table meeting of government and opposition leaders, Joseph did not describe the basis for the new charges. But he said the two men also are under investigation for forming unconstitutional organizations.

Honecker and Mielke already are charged with corruption because of alleged misuse of state funds to finance a luxurious lifestyle. If convicted of treason, they could face sentences ranging from 10 years` imprisonment to life.

Until recently Honecker was under house arrest at the luxury villa where he lived in nearby Wanlitz. His fragile state of health makes it questionable whether he ever will be brought to trial.

Nine members of the Communist Party Politburo that served under Honecker are under arrest. A parliamentary corruption committee said last month that treason charges also might be brought against Honecker`s right-hand man and economics chief, Guenter Mittag.

The round-table talks between government and opposition are seeking to reach agreement on policies of reform.

Modrow, bowing to opposition pressure, participated in the session after having said he would not do so until next week. He promised to publicize details of how the secret police force is being disbanded.

Manfred Sauer, an official who has been overseeing the operation, said the force had numbered 85,000 people and had employed 109,000 informants. He said the force had a budget of more than $2 billion in 1989, and its armory included 124,000 revolvers and pistols and 67,000 machine pistols.

Modrow appealed for an end to the industrial strikes that have been racking the country because of worker dissatisfaction over the continued existence of the secret police.

In Hamburg, the West German magazine Der Spiegel said Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble is preparing to announce a reduction in welfare benefits to East German emigrants to discourage them from settling in the West. West German officials have been alarmed that more than 20,000 East Germans have emigrated to the West this year.

Schaeuble did not deny the Spiegel report but said he did not intend to

``build a dam`` against East Germans. He said the policy was intended to make sure they do not have to leave their homes in the hundreds of thousands. West Germany currently provides generous resettlement benefits to East Germans and allows them to participate in pension and health insurance schemes as though they had been paying into them for years.

Lothar Spaeth, prime minister of the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, said in a radio interview that the federal government would review the benefits.

He said West Germany could absorb about 300,000 emigrants this year, but more than that would cause social tensions. Many West Germans already are resentful over the benefits program.